Sheer accident or the secret laws
That rule this dream, my destiny,
Will — O needed and sweet homeland
That not without glory and without shame embrace
A hundred and fifty arduous years —
That I, the drop, should speak with you, the river,
That I, the instant, speak with you, who are time,
And that the intimate dialogue resort,
As the custom is, to the rites and the dark hints
Beloved of the gods, and to the decorum of verse.

My country, I have sensed you in the tumbledown
Decadence of the widespread suburbs,
And in that thistledown that the pampas wind
Blows into the entrance hall, and in the patient rain,
And in the slow coursing of the stars,
And in the hand that tunes a guitar,
And in the gravitation of the plain
That, from however far, our blood feels
As the Briton feels the sea, and in the pious
Symbols and urns of a vault,
And in the gallant love of jasmine,
And in the silver of a picture-frame and the polished
Rubbing of the silent mahogany,
And in the flavors of meat and fruits,
And in a flag sort of blue and white
Over a barracks, and in unappetizing stories
Of street-corner knifings, and in the sameness
Of afternoons that are wiped out and leave us,
And in the vague pleased memory
Of patios with slaves bearing
The names of their masters, and in the poor
Leaves of certain books for the blind
That fire scattered, and in the fall
Of those epic rains in September
That nobody will forget — but these things
Are not wholly you yourself nor yet your symbols.

You are more than your wide territory
And more than the days of your unmeasured time,
You are more than the unimaginable sum
Of your children after you. We do not know
What you are for God in the living
Heart of the eternal archetypes,
But by this imperfectly glimpsed visage
We live and die and have our being —

O never-from-me and mystery-my-country.

[From Dreamtigers, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Harold Morland]